From family businesses to multi-national organisations, we drive positive change with design more words here
Sharing stories from a design supply-chain
Wood LAB Pren
What we did:
// Market research
// Insight interviews
// Report creation and launch event
Wales lost much of its furniture industry from the 1990s, and this investigative project sought to find new ways to revive it, with a proposal for putting Welsh timber at the heart of a new design-led strategy. With some significant barriers for furniture designers to access and work with local timber, it is a challenging space, but with a series of insight interviews with manufacturers, designers and those in forestry and timber, substantial positive opportunities became clear.
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Working with Wood LAB Pren, a project supported by the Welsh Government’s Rural Communities programme, the core aim was to educate, innovate and inspire people in the timber sector to recognise design as a driver of added value, competitive advantage and new user-led solutions. Focused around a series of face-to-face interviews from across the timber supply-chain, the 40-page project report brought together a collection of voices and resources in Wales, as well as from across the UK and globally. A launch event workshop was facilitated to create next-step actions, and as a result a subsequent project will explore the market potential for a collective of Welsh furniture designers to supply contract and retail buyers.
“Feedback from the launch event was extremely positive and attendees were impressed with how it was facilitated. Comments about the report have noted that it is the most interesting and accessible read on this topic that people in the industry have ever come across.”
Dylan Jones, Wood Lab Pren
